Young, diverse, optimistic: Who entrepreneurs are and what they believe

Launching a start-up business is getting harder, and the government isn’t helping, according to business owners surveyed in the annual entrepreneurship report the Kauffman Foundation released Wednesday.

Seventy-nine percent of start-up business owners and 83 percent of owners of older businesses say the government hasn’t helped them start their business. Sixty percent of startups don’t believe the government cares about businesses like their own, and 68 percent of owners of older businesses said the same.

Despite that, entrepreneurs are optimistic about their own businesses and the economy in general.

— At 52 percent, black start-up owners are the only group in which a majority believes the government cares about them. (No majority of men, women, whites or Hispanics said that.) Seventy-six percent of black owners of older businesses, however, say the government doesn’t care about them.

— Pretty much everyone thinks the government should be doing more to help businesses like them (92 percent of startups; 89 percent of older businesses).

— But most businesses, new and old, aren’t using current government services, such as working with the Small Business Administration or applying for governmental grants and loans

— Most businesses owners, new and old, are optimistic about the effects of the new tax plan, but are more split on repealing the Affordable Care Act, net neutrality and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) plan